We're Getting Married!

I first met Frankie in middle school. We were part of the same big friend group and would occasionally see each other at parties in 8th grade, but we never really talked much. We knew of each other, but that was about it. Everything changed when we ended up in the same world history class. Frankie sat right behind me, which pretty much forced us to start talking. At first, it was just small conversations about class, helping each other with assignments, or me asking to borrow a pencil—since I somehow always managed to lose mine. But before long, those small conversations turned into a real friendship. We started getting to know each other better and quickly became great friends. We also had choir together, and every once in a while I would catch him staring at me from across the room. Thinking he was just being funny or trying to mess with me, I would make a silly face back at him. It became our little back-and-forth. What I didn’t realize at the time was that he wasn’t staring at me to joke around—he actually had a crush on me. The summer before we started high school, Frankie finally built up the courage to tell me how he felt by sending me a Snapchat message admitting that he liked me. Now remember, this was back in 2017 and Snapchat was how we all communicated with each other then. So this task was very brave of little 14 year old Frankie at that time. I remember being surprised but also excited, because by then he had become someone really important to me. Of course, I decided to give him a chance—and from that moment on, everything changed. What started as two kids who barely spoke to each other in middle school turned into a friendship, then a relationship, and eventually a love story that has grown with us ever since. The rest, as they say, is history.